


happy birthday to me

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (I think?), Angst, Birthdays, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Maveth - Freeform, yes both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 00:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7197074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five of Jemma's birthdays, starting from the year before she joined Coulson's team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	happy birthday to me

1\. 

Fitz has forgotten her birthday.

She’s not normally one to fuss about it, but she’s so overwhelmed with work and she’s barely been sleeping and she thought perhaps today could be a bright spot in an otherwise abysmal month but he hasn’t even stopped by her lab today and she can’t help being a bit bitter.

He’s usually in Scotland for his birthday, but she’ll always call and he’ll take the phone out onto his mum’s back porch and they’ll talk for nearly an hour about nothing at all and though she buys him physical presents, she privately thinks it’s those phone calls he enjoys the most.

She’s fairly private about her birthday. She uses it as a marker for the passing of time, a moment to look at where she is and where she’s been and where she’d like to be in another year’s time. Balloons and songs and presents and slumber parties were never her prerogative.

Until Fitz. He comes from a tradition of overwhelming holiday celebrations -- his mum doing her best to make up for what they lacked in terms of wealth or extended family, he admits to her one year. With the proper determination and creativity, a birthday can be the most beautiful day of the year, he insists, blushing only slightly when she mocks his sincerity.

Jemma finally gives in and shuts off the lights with a sigh. He’s not coming. She knows that things cannot stay the same forever -- she wouldn’t want them to -- but she’s grown rather fond of Fitz’s enthusiasm. She thinks maybe, someday, she will learn to love her own birthday as much as he seems to.

Back at their apartment, there are five burnt cakes in the trash can. Fitz has fallen asleep across the countertop, one hand still gripping the wooden spoon he was using to stir batter for another attempt. His laptop is open to a recipe and a bag on the couch contains candles and frosting.

Jemma feels an instant swell of adoration, followed swiftly by guilt. He’s been working hard too, sleeping as little as she, and still he has made time to celebrate her.

She thinks about slipping the bowl away from him and eating the batter alone in her room, letting herself wallow. In the end, she turns on the TV and watches some cop show, hoping the gentle murmur will wake Fitz and she can properly thank him, but she falls asleep on the couch. 

  
  


 

2.

Jemma has forgotten her own birthday.

They have just joined Coulson’s team. She and Fitz are the first to move their belongings onto the Bus. They spend an unnecessary hour debating the pros and cons of the different bunk placements until Coulson walks by and makes the decision for them. It’s thrilling and terrifying and the first time Jemma has done anything new since she started working at SciOps over five years ago and to take her mind off of everything, she puts herself right to work in running through the lab and creating a meticulous inventory, listing anything they don’t have but might need, checking that the emergency shower works, and rearranging some of the equipment to reflect the logical progression of material analysis and thereby potentially shaving a few seconds off of the process.

Fitz has been completely a similar assessment of the plane with Coulson, so she barely sees him, even though this is supposed to be a lab for them to share. They haven’t even had anything to eat since breakfast, so Coulson buys a pizza. It is only once Jemma is in her bunk with a slice and a can of seltzer that she sees the date on her laptop and realizes.

Her parents didn’t call, which is not exactly unexpected but still stings a bit. She knows Coulson knows her file by heart and still he said nothing. Fitz has been a mess for weeks, a nervous bundle of energy and anxiety in anticipation for this change, so she can hardly blame him -- as if she would, after all he’s done.

She goes to bed early.

The next morning, there is a little jewelry box outside her door with a silver rose necklace inside. She doesn’t say anything to Fitz, but she makes sure to wear a lower collar so he can see it. 

 

 

3.

Jemma wishes she could forget it was her birthday.

She takes a walk after work, actually leaving the lab a few minutes early because she cannot bear to be trapped among Hydra agents for a moment longer with these thoughts suffocating her. The liberty she’s taken could earn her a scolding tomorrow, but she doesn’t much care as she hurries away across the city until she hits park and slows in the relative cover of the trees.

She knows, logically, no one from her team should wish her happy birthday because it would put her in danger. She wonders if anyone will even notice. Fitz might have, once, in the past, but since the pod and everything between them, he’s probably trying as hard as she is to forget there was a day on which Jemma Simmons entered this world.

She stops in the middle of a bridge, looking down at the rushing water below. She wishes she could jump into it -- not out of a desire for self-harm, but to whisk her away to somewhere she could start anew. She could bob about in the current until she hit open ocean or haul herself out in some forgotten industrial suburb before then.

Instead, she reaches into her pocket. Wearing the necklace is out of the question at Hydra -- the thought of someone like Bakshi looking at the rose with his slimy Hydra eyes makes her skin crawl -- and even carrying it around with her like this seems dangerous, like she could betray Fitz accidentally if anyone found it.

She holds her hand over the water, letting the chain slither through her hand until the necklace is dangling just from her index finger.

It would be so easy to let it fall. To un-celebrate her birthday, in a way.

But letting go of something is always easy. It is holding on that takes effort.

She closes her eyes and gathers the necklace back up again so the rose presses painfully into her palm. 

 

 

4.

Jemma doesn’t tell Will it is her birthday.

She is only fairly certain it is today, as her calculations are not exact without a clock or a sun by which to track the passing of time. But more than the calculations, she feels something in her bones today. Like they are splintering and and piercing her and she can do nothing but fall apart. It is entirely mental, of course -- phantom physical symptoms brought on by a projection of what she believes she should be feeling if it is indeed her birthday -- but that doesn’t stop her from feeling it.

She goes outside without saying anything to him. She couldn’t explain.

She sits on a rock and watches the horizon. Like the sun will rise. Like her birthday will actually be  _ day _ . Like there is anything more to hope for on this planet.

She thinks of the  _ before  _ as little as possible now. At first Will had asked her to talk about it, to talk about Earth and its food and its trees and her friends and their dreams but it hurts too much.

But today that all breaks through again. She thinks back to dozens of birthdays celebrated with Fitz -- his, hers, his mum’s, the Queen’s -- and how he always insisted on making a wish. She knew he knew there was nothing to it, for the passing thought of an individual, a cry into the night of the progression of the universe, had no power. But he did it anyway, without fail, and he’d get positively grumpy if she didn’t do the same.

They’ve clearly not had much luck with their wishes, she thinks wryly, if their mishaps over the past ten years are any reflection.

But maybe today, in this void, her cry into the night will mean something.

She makes a single wish. The wish she hasn’t dared voice for weeks.

_ I want to go home _ .

When she opens her eyes, she is still there, on the rock in that eternal dark. She has no ruby slippers, no fairy godmother, no divine intervention.

She has run out of tears. The sand and the darkness and the loneliness and the desperation and the guilt and the aching memories have taken all she has to give. So while sadness explodes in her chest so painfully she leans forward with a slight gasp, she does not cry.

Birthday wishes are for people who already have everything they need. 

  
  
  
  
5.

Jemma never wants it to stop being her birthday.

It is late morning and the whole room is filled with sun. Jemma is sure she thinks this every time after making love with Fitz, but she has never been so happy. Every inch of her body is suffused with contentment. She is stretched out across their bed, wearing just his T-shirt, and he is cooking breakfast for the both of them in the next room.

Coulson claimed he didn’t grant them leave for the week overlapping with Jemma’s birthday specifically for that reason, but Jemma can’t put it past him. It is all too perfect, from the luxurious penthouse suite to the ideal weather to the radio silence from the base, as promised to preserve their vacation.

At another time, she would have been frightened by the perfection. She remembers that feeling from the first time Fitz kissed her. Nothing that  _ right _ could be followed by anything but disaster -- so she had kissed him to try to prevent it. (It had come anyway.) Their history is a satire of yin and yang, with the good complemented swiftly, painfully, and disproportionately by bad.

But no longer. Now, they press so close to each other that there is no room for evil to disturb their equilibrium.

Fitz has promised to make this the best birthday she has ever had. Not that that’s a hard bar to meet, all things considered, but he scrambled from her grabbing hands and pulled on his boxers with talk of romantic boat rides across lakes and picnics by the seashore and wine tastings and spas and feeding each other chocolate under the stars.

It sounds lovely. It sounds perfect. But Jemma wants  _ this _ , this moment, this feeling, to last forever. She wants to stay forever, sunkissed on the bed she shares with Fitz while he hums in the kitchen.

That would be gift enough for a lifetime. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill! Find me on Tumblr: same name, lots o love to share


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